Eduardo Paolozzi of the Artist’S Most Intricate, Busy and Brash Print Series
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B3 HOSPITAL G9 The North 3 G11 E Business School Rose Garden Gate Nicholson I V Running R Building D Track G10 T 4 N Bramall Concert Hall AL PR E P N R25 utes ITC C CA in H M m A N A Munrow 5 T In the late 1960s, Paolozzi was a visiting Professor of Art at the I H P TS V G R20 B2 IN Sports Centre 5 R B1 M North Car Park FaradayO l IR A choo B ical S D D Med a N P A R University of California. Gaining stimulation from the American E ST CE R O Research and Cultural Collections W environment through trips to Disneyland, L.A. and the computer R21 R19 R18 R22 centre at the University, Paolozzi produced this series of screen prints EST Main Library D W R17 OA P R University Y IT R26 which was garnered from magazines including Scientific American, Station S 1 R R23 R16 E IV N R27 P Playboy, Aviation Technical Magazine, and Fortune: Z.E.E.P. is one U West Gate R28R.30 5 University square R24 Eduardo Paolozzi of the artist’s most intricate, busy and brash print series. R14 KING Y16 R15 The Barber EDWARD’S Institute of SCHOOL Faraday Y9 2 Fine Arts Y8 R2 UNIV R1 ERS 1924–2005 ITY Y2 ROA Y17 D EA Paolozzi touches here on different elements of American culture which ST East Y10 R13 Gate MAIN ENTRANCE 3 Calcium Light Night Bronze 2000 R3 Y1 CHANCELLOR’S he came across in California. In ‘6228 Plus: Cry on my shoulder, COURT R8 O3 R4 4 Y12 R9 E Located on the West entrance of the University, D Photolithographs. 1974–1976 no sad songs’ jukebox titles appear under thumbnails of cars, scenes Y11 R5 The Guild G R12 of Students B R7 O2 A Y13 Bramall R10 S R6 Music O1 near University Station. T of combat, pin-up nudes and Bugs Bunny. This creates a comic strip Y3 Building O Located in the Bramall Concert Hall. 24 N O4 P Y4 A sensation of popular imagery being played out over jukebox classics, RIN R Sport and G R H K OAD SOUT Exercise R11 R Paolozzi’s intensive fascination with the processes and products of Sciences Y5 O evoking an American diner experience. A more political commentary Y14 A Cedar P D Beech House Music was a central part of Paolozzi’s life. From childhood, his daily Y6 South House modern technology led to his developing ways of using mass-production Car Park city centre is suggested in ‘Human Fate and World Powers’. Paolozzi hints at Ash To routine was played out to the familiar, melodic sound of the radio. House methods to create giant 3D forms. His lectureship in sculpture at CentralY15 Y7 political tensions between America and the U.S.S.R. through icons of Sports Pitches D St Martins from 1955 further enhanced his sculptural process. Pressing Grange OA the Cold War such as the ‘Space Race’, and also hints at Globalisation L R Road TO His father made radios for each room of their house, and Paolozzi Gate RIS South B diverse items – toys, forks, clock parts, sticks –into soft clay to derive Gate 38 through a multicoloured atlas of close-knit uniform countries brought Pedestrian access only A To Selly Oak Campus later came to listen continuously to music whilst working in his studio. To Jarratt Hall together by the movement of ideas. a negative form, many of Paolozzi’s sculptures bear traces of found In the early 1970s, after discovering a German magazine illustration objects, creating multi-textured surfaces that urge us to touch. rendering organ music into pictorial form, the artist began working on collages to evoke the movement and energy of music. This idea Paolozzi found technical engineers who would catalyse his drawings Calcium Light Night. informed the series and models into monumental forms that were then bolted and welded together, creating sculpture with a mechanical undertone. The assembly In this series, Paolozzi has created a visual equivalent of the method may be understood as an industrial collage, with Paolozzi ‘collage technique’ employed by the composer Charles Ives, whose narrating the finished creation. Sitting over five metres high, the compositions fused different genres of music, and layered different momentous Faraday, like Newton at the British Library, London, orchestral sounds and rhythms through random cues from the is a key example of Paolozzi’s mechanical personalities that enhance conductor. This created a miscellaneous, collaged sound. The public institutions in Great Britain. grey, black and white fragments of photographically enlarged linear compositions suggest the vibrations, movement and flow of music. Faraday was manufactured at The Sculpture Factory, Clerkenwell. The mechanical element of the linear compositions might also be It was given to the University by the artist to mark the centenary in interpreted as parts of musical instruments, such as the curling 2000. Dominating the crest between the Edgbaston campus and the of brass pipes, or the tubular bells of a vibraphone. The result is railway station, Faraday observes the flowing journey of University life, a collection of works that seem to vibrate and stir on the walls. a time of growth, travel and change, but also a time of reflection of the Faraday under construction at The past – and the future. The artist chose to embellish the base of the Sculpture Factory, Clerkenwell 1999 Ives’s composition ‘Calcium Light Night’ was an interpretation for sculpture with engraved lettering from T.S Eliot’s poem ‘Dry Salvages’, chamber ensemble of the torchlight parades held during student to evoke something of the purpose of the University experience. elections at Yale University. The piece begins quietly, then slowly progresses into the climaxing chaos of the main section, before Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging; regressing down to calm once again. Paolozzi’s series is hung in the You are not those who saw the harbour busy Bramall Building, where students materialize in a cacophony Receding, or those who will disembark. Edgbaston, Birmingham, of footsteps, shouts and conversation and then just as suddenly Here between the hither and the farther shore B15 2TT, United Kingdom Text by Lucy Wheeler. disperse on the hour for lectures. This melodic student rhythm While time is withdrawn, consider the future Images courtesy of The Paolozzi Foundation. sustainable forests. 6375 © University of Birmingham 2012. Printed on paper made with wood fibre from seems very much in tune with this series. And the past with an equal mind. www.birmingham.ac.uk Eduardo Paolozzi (1924–2005) Surrealism and The Independent Group Moonstrips Empire News General Dynamic F.U.N. Screenprints 1967 Screenprints and photolithographs 1965–1970 Friendships with artists Raymond Mason and Nigel Located in the Law entrance lobby and stairs leading Located in the Business School, first floor corridor. Henderson inspired Paolozzi to look beyond Oxford Eduardo Paolozzi was a prolific sculptor, printmaker, up to the Law Library. collector and teacher, whose work explores a life-long for inspiration. Mason’s knowledge of the Parisian General Dynamic F.U.N. is a series of fifty screenprints and fascination with popular culture, science and technology. art scene, coupled with Henderson’s contact with Paolozzi became increasingly occupied with printmaking in the 1960s. lithographs predominantly made using images culled from Marcel Duchamp, attracted Paolozzi to Surrealism, Working at Kelpra Studios, London, with the master silkscreen printer American magazines. Paolozzi’s association with the University of Birmingham began in and in 1947 he moved to Paris. Christopher Prater, he created images that translated collage into The series could be understood as a visual accompaniment 1996, when he was awarded an Honorary D. Litt, joining artists Barbara screen prints. This experimentation led to the series Moonstrips to Paolozzi’s article ‘Moonstrips-General Dynamic Fun’ in the Hepworth (1970), John Bratby (1992), John Walker (1994), and later Inspired by the Surrealist movement, Paolozzi began to use Empire News (1967). These one hundred screenprints made up of magazine Ambit (1967) which parodied the sugar-coated Howard Hodgkin (1997), Raymond Mason (2000) and Cornelia Parker unconventional materials and to juxtapose images in vibrant both random texts and images interspersed with coloured geometric jargon of American popular press. (2005) as Honorary Graduates. Paolozzi gave four print series to the combinations in his sculptures and collages. This multifarious patterns serve as an idiosyncratic analysis of popular culture.